[Lazarus] Can't start lazarus trunk

[Joost van der Sluis]

Op 03-01-19 om 03:23 schreef Martok via lazarus:
> Am 03.01.2019 um 00:31 schrieb Joost van der Sluis via lazarus:
>> Should be fixed. In FPC (added the check if the compiler exists) and in
>> Lazarus (do not choke on it when an exception occurs)
> 
> This may be a stupid question, but why do I now have to click through a message
> "An error occured during the initialization of Fppkg: Could not find a fpc
> executable in the PATH.
> Check your Fppkg configuration and restart Lazarus to be able to use Fppkg's
> functionality." ever time I start Lazarus?

The same holds if you remove gdb, make or the source-files of fpc's 
packages. While in principle Lazarus could be used without those.

There are a lot of features in Lazarus and almost no-one will ever use 
all of them. But they have to be configured properly so that when 
someone wants to use this particular feature, he or she does not drown 
in a swamp of vague problems.

Like with the other configuration problems that pop-up frequently, this 
functionality should be checked during startup with a pop-up to fix it. 
That's all work in progress. (Install the fppkg-package, and you can see 
how it could be done)

> I'm not aware of ever installing/enabling/whatever-one-does any sort of package
> manager, neither fppkg nor OPM...

That's because it's build-in into fpc. You can not compile fpc without 
using at least fpmake (not entirely true, but it's the default). So 
you've never configured it yourself, this is done for you.
Question is where it did go wrong. You probably altered the 
configuration yourself, and thought that you did that properly, because 
no-one ever noticed you that there was a mistake somewhere. Lazarus now 
notifies you about the mistake.

Then the question remains: why should Lazarus warn you when you do not 
use the functionality? Well, see above.

Ok, and one more answer to a question that you did not pose: the new 
changes in Lazarus make it possible to integrate the build-system 
(fpmake) that Free Pascal uses into Lazarus. This opens a lot of 
oppurtunities, like compiling LCL-based applications on the command-line 
or other IDE's. Or even IDE-less environments like with Studio Code.
Other ways to do dependency-checking (this is what Lazarus is currently 
having troubles with, checking the dependencies on Free Pascal packages, 
which was not done previously) and improved compilation times.

It's just some new functionality, needs some time to mature.

Regards,

Joost.